When Cavaliers Attack
by LisaT
Summary: Sequel to "The Lost Ones". Sarah Jane and Co. find themselves embroiled in an adventure involving dogs, English history, and high politics. ON HIATUS UNTIL ESCAPE FROM CORNER EFFECTED. HELP REQUIRED...
1. Chapter 1

_**Here we are, the first chapter of the sequel to **_**The Lost Ones**_**, which you're advised to read first if only to find out who Ned and Ricky are. Also note: **_**Pedigree Dogs Exposed **_**was indeed broadcast in the UK in August 2008, and has spawned controversy in its wake. Google it and see. In the meantime, read, enjoy, and review!**_

Sarah Jane Smith smiled when the first sound to greet her as she elbowed her front door open after a couple of days away was the rise and fall of teenage voices. Sometimes she could hardly believe that little more than a year ago she'd been the only human in this big house.

Her smile was replaced by a raised eyebrow as she registered the conversation filtering into the front hall.

"- oh, of course Sarah Jane will like her! How could she not?" That was Maria.

A pause. "How do you know it's a she?" Luke, sounding confused.

"The same way you know you're a he!" Sarah Jane heard Maria return smartly and her eyes widened. _What_ was going on?

She dropped her bags loudly and her lips twitched at the sudden silence that descended. The partially closed living room door swung open, and her entire gang appeared.

"Mum!" Luke flung himself into her arms, followed immediately after by nearly eleven year old Dickon, or Ricky, as the former Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, preferred to be known these days.

Ricky's brother Ned sent her a small smile and bent to pick up her bags. Sarah Jane put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed. He was her responsible one. "Have they all been good?"

Ned looked awkward and her eyes narrowed.

"You have a suspicious mind, Sarah Jane," Clyde told her solemnly from where he was leaning against the banisters. "Anyone ever tell you that?"

"You know what they say. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you," she tossed back at him. She gave Ned a final squeeze before putting her hands on her hips and giving the entire group a stern look. "All right then. What have you done?"

Her gaze transferred to Maria, who was, most uncharacteristically, hanging back. Her hands were behind her, Sarah Jane noticed. She raised her eyebrows at the girl.

Maria blushed and opened her mouth, but was forestalled by a high pitched noise that sounded remarkably like .... a puppy?

"Do you have something you need to show me?"

"We found her today, when we went to the park with Alan," Ricky explained quickly, his blue eyes fixed imploringly on Sarah Jane's face. "I - we - had such a dog, before." He looked sad for a moment, and her heart wrenched. It was hard to imagine how much Ned and Ricky had lost in their barely remembered journey to the future. "Please, Mamere, may we not keep her?"

Sarah Jane puffed out a breath. "Let me guess. It's a dog," she said resignedly. "Clyde, what did I tell you when you mentioned this before?"

Clyde raised his hands. "Oi, it was nothin' to do with me, Sarah Jane! Ricky and Maria are the guilty parties this time." He sent Maria a disgusted look. "I told you to get something big and scary. This is _not_ it."

"Maria?"

Sheepishly, the girl brought her hands around to her front. She was holding a small spaniel puppy with large soft brown eyes, droopy ears, a milk chin and a thin white blaze running down the middle of its face. At the moment the puppy seemed stunned into stillness, and Sarah Jane frowned.

"Honestly, don't you people know better than this? Look at it, it's clearly no mutt. I'm sure someone's looking for it."

"We think not, my lady," Ned said in his quiet voice.

Ricky had adopted the name 'Mamere' for Sarah Jane early on (he had flatly refused to address her as 'Sarah Jane', and she had balked at being 'Mum' after the whole Ashley debacle) but the elder and more reserved boy rarely did so. They'd have to discuss it again soon, she thought absently. He couldn't be allowed to address her in such an archaic manner indefinitely.

"We found it in a - a cardboard box," Ned was saying. "There were two other puppies there." He paused and his jaw tightened. "They were dead."

Sarah Jane swallowed. "I see. That's odd, it looks like a pedigree dog, and surely no-one would leave saleable puppies to die when..."

"It's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel," Maria said, her dark eyes snapping. "The vet said so. He said that ever since _Pedigree Dogs Exposed _was shown on the telly in the summer, more and more people have been abandoning them. And with the credit crunch, fewer people have the money to spend on puppies anyway."

"But still," Sarah Jane protested weakly, trying not to give in to the mute appeal of one pair of soft puppy eyes and four pairs of equally pleading teenage eyes, "there was no reason to bring it home, was there?"

Luke's face became wistful. "We thought you'd like her. She's sweet, isn't she? And she's got nowhere else to go."

Not for the first time, Sarah Jane found herself regretting the day she'd allowed her kindhearted and hopelessly naive son to see her home as some kind of general purpose all-species intergalactic refuge shelter.

Ned looked up. "My lady, pray do keep her." He reached out a hand to gently caress the flatly rounded head which rested on Maria's arm. "I had a comforter spaniel such as this, when I was younger ... I miss her. She died before we went to the Tower, Dickon and I."

"Ricky," the owner of the name muttered.

She pursed her lips. "If we keep her - and I did say 'if', mind - who will be responsible for her? She's still a puppy, and they're a lot of work. Who's going to feed her, train her, walk her?"

Luke and Ricky looked at Ned, who gave one of his rare smiles. "I will, I swear it."

Sarah Jane sent her 'second' son a straight look. "You've done this before, have you? Yourself? Bear in mind we don't have a staff to do this sort of thing for you." Her tone was unwontedly sharp.

Ned smiled again, and she caught her breath. He was so serious and reserved that she often forgot that he was the son of a man once accounted the handsomest in England. "Mamere, even princes must train their own animals, and once we left court, we had few who were faithful to us. I know what I ask."

Sarah Jane sighed and glanced round. Ricky and Luke stared back at her, round-eyed. Maria frankly pouted as she treasured the pup's smooth head against her cheek. Clyde rolled his eyes. Ned merely stood and returned her gaze openly.

She threw up her hands. "Oh, all right! You may keep her, boys. As for you Maria Jackson, you can put in your fair share and I'll tell your father so." She glared at them and tried to ignore the triumphant looks passing between Maria, Luke and Ricky.

_I'm hopeless_, she groused to herself. _Evidently I need to toughen up. They seem to think I'm a pushover_.

As much to assert what remained of her supposed authority as anything else, she took off her coat and handed it to Luke. "Hang that up for me, would you? Ricky, run the black bag up to my room, but the smaller case needs to go straight up to the attic. Clyde, go and put the kettle on and dig out a menu. I'm too tired to cook. Maria, give me that pup. Are you staying for tea?"

"Can I, Sarah Jane?"

"You may as well, but run home first and tell your dad he's welcome to join us." She gave the girl another mock glare, but Maria only grinned in response before giving her the small ruby-brown pup and running out. Sarah Jane shook her head before giving Ned a wry look.

"I suppose all that answers my question about being _good_, doesn't it?" She secured the pup firmly under one arm (it was starting to wriggle, a little) and slipped her hand into the crook of Ned's arm. "Let's go to the kitchen before Luke and Clyde order food from every takeway menu we have."

For a moment Ned looked like the barely-fourteen year old boy he was in instead of a young man who had been trained to be a king. "I like pizza," he said decidedly, "but do you not wish to rest and refresh yourself before we dine, my lady?"

She squeezed his elbow. "I'll have a bath later, thanks. For the moment, I'm as hungry as I'm sure you lot are. Well?" she asked as Maria dashed back in, panting slightly.

"He's got work to do," the girl said, "but he says to tell you he'll do the food next time. Here, give her to me." She extracted the puppy from Sarah Jane's arms and started cooing when it began to lick her nose.

"What are we going to do with her when we're working?" Luke asked suddenly as the three of them entered the kitchen together. He had evidently tried to set the table before deciding it was too much trouble and put a pile of plates and cutlery down instead.

Sarah Jane repressed a smile. "You'll have to work that one out yourselves. What are we drinking? Coke? No thanks, Luke, I prefer not to rot my stomach before I have to." She accepted the cup of tea Clyde handed her with a smile just as Ricky fell in.

"Food?" he asked, panting slightly from the run up to the top of the house and back down again.

"It's coming," Clyde told him. "Pizza and chips. I'm starving."

"Rescuing animals is hard work," Luke agreed from where he was chewing on a slice of bread.

"Harder than catching aliens?" Maria teased.

Luke rolled his eyes and leaned forward to turn on the small TV that Sarah Jane had finally installed (after much arguing) in the kitchen. Being Luke, he immediately put the news on.

"Boring, boring, boring," Clyde muttered. "Lukey boy, haven't I taught you _yet_ that the news is for old people?"

"Shh!" hissed Maria, to his obvious surprise and Sarah Jane's amusement. "Look!"

They all turned to look at the screen where an image of a dog not unlike the one currently cradled in Maria's arms flashed up.

"...on other news, some of London's dogs seem to be exhibiting behaviour reminiscent of that shown by the dogs in Dodie Smith's classic _101 Dalmations _and _The Starlight Barking_. On the very spot where Charles I was executed in 1649 in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace, numbers of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels have been gathering to the confusion of both their owners and passersby..."

Clyde's eyes were like saucers. "The dog's an alien. The flipping dog's an alien!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Here's the second chapter! I'll put a photo in my profile for those of you who want to visualise the puppy. Incidentally, all the information in this chapter about Cavalier health issues is correct as far as I know, although obviously greatly simplified. Google 'cavaliertalk' or 'cavalierhealth' for more detail.  
**

**Please, if you are considering getting one of these dogs, do your homework and only buy a puppy from someone who has done the appropriate screening and has the paperwork to prove it. For Cavaliers, that means getting heart clearance for grandparents (the 'clear heart' test is virtually worthless below the age of five) and it must come from a vet cardiologist, not a normal vet. That's the minimum. Ideally, the breeder would also have MRI'd his/her stock and be able to discuss the results. Only an A or D MRI result can be bred from if I remember correctly. Syringomyelia is _not_ something you want to deal with if you can avoid it with a little time and care. **

**Rant over! Please do review and let me know what you think. Thanks to adodcefa, who has stuck with this universe since the first part of _The Lost Ones_.**

* * *

By the time the puppy had been with them for two days, there was no longer any question about keeping her. Even Clyde had capitulated when the tiny bundle of determined puppy climbed up his leg and chest and then sat and licked his face for a solid five minutes.

And then Luke decided to google 'Cavalier King Charles Spaniel'.

For the next twenty four hours, Sarah Jane and her extended family were subjected to a running stream of random information about the breed. Which was fine when discussing some of the more endearing traits of the Cavalier, and less so when Luke, with mounting alarm, reported the high incidence of early heart failure and agonising neurological conditions. At that point, Sarah Jane insisted on bringing the puppy back to the vet.

When it was their turn, Sarah Jane marched into the consulting room followed by her three boys. Maria and Clyde would have been there too if they could, but there were limits to how much teenager her small car could carry.

Luke put the puppy on the table. "Can you do a genetic scan?" he asked the vet seriously. "Mr Smith says he doesn't doesn't do Earth animals. We want to know about Mitral Valve Disease and Syringomyelia and Dry-Eye-Curly-Coat Syndrome and Cushing's and -"

"All right, that's enough," Sarah Jane put in hastily when the vet's jaw dropped and then dropped again. She flashed an apologetic smile. "As you can tell, my son has been researching Cavaliers since his last visit. I gather this is not a particularly healthy breed - or is that just scaremongering?"

The vet ran his hands over the puppy. "There's truth in both of those statements, Miss Smith," he began slowly. "Certainly, the Cavalier faces two very serious health issues in MVD - that's the heart problem - and Syringomyelia, where the skull literally becomes too small to hold the brain and pain and other problems can appear. But - and it's a big but - both of these are, by and large, acquired, degenerative conditions. She certainly doesn't have a heart murmur now, and SM rarely shows in a pup of this age."

"Is there anything we can do to prevent it?" Luke asked eagerly. "I looked, but it didn't say -"

"Only time will tell," the vet said ruefully. "Unfortunately, since this little girl is a rescue, all I can tell you is that you should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Get the best pet insurance you can find and afford."

Sarah Jane heard the boys whispering and nodding in that strange way they had, as if they could communicate almost without speech. She started to ask about the insurance when Ned spoke.

"We will pay for that," he said in his formal way. "All three of us."

The vet glanced from them to Sarah Jane. "You're fortunate to have such responsible sons, Miss Smith."

"And we're fortunate to have her for our mum," Luke returned, a trifle too quickly.

She put a hand on his arm; all three of her boys were still affected by the events of six months previously, and Luke in particular tended to react badly to any criticism, implied or otherwise, of Sarah Jane as a result.

"Thank you; that's a relief. There was one other thing I wanted to ask," she began as she remembered the news bulletin from several days before. "You mentioned this neurological condition - Syringomyelia, was it?"

"Yes. Or SM, as it's often known."

"Hmm. Well, I was wondering ... could it cause odd behaviour? Such as making the dog want to go to a specific spot and _stay_ there?"

The vet looked amused. "It would be unusual. SM affects the nervous system and the body's response to sensation, as a rule. I wouldn't expect it to cause mass pilgrimage to Whitehall, for example, if you're thinking of that ridiculous news item from the other day."

"Where's that?" Sarah Jane heard Ricky mutter to Ned.

"He's talking about the only surviving bit of Whitehall Palace. You might know it as York Place," Luke began, his passion for providing information overriding his discretion. "It burnt down in 1698."

The vet was looking at Luke strangely. "He's a bit of a Mastermind, isn't he?"

"Just a bit," Sarah Jane agreed as she lifted the puppy and smiled. "Thanks for your reassurance. We'll be back again if we need anything." She began to usher the boys out of the consulting room.

"Don't forget to worm her!" the vet called behind her.

"We won't!" she called back. "Thanks!" With a sigh of relief, she closed the consulting room door over, paid the receptionist, and then hustled her sons out of the surgery and back to the car. She handed the puppy to Ned.

"What will we call her?" Ricky demanded, having been unusually quiet throughout the visit.

Sarah Jane wondered if he'd been stunned into silence by the interior of the surgery; the medical prowess of the twenty first century still awed both Ricky and Ned when it was aimed at humans, never mind animals.

"I nearly blew it, didn't I," Luke mourned, ignoring Ricky. "I got excited and I said too much."

Sarah Jane smiled at him as he and Ricky - being shorter than Ned - clambered into the back. "Never stop being excited, Luke." She slid into the driver's seat. "The universe is an amazing place."

She could see how his face had brightened in the rear view mirror and started the car. "Let's get home. I'm sure Maria and Clyde will be waiting for us and we can talk about the strange Cavalier behaviour more then."

"But we are we gonna call her?" Ricky repeated, having absorbed modern slang and abbreviations at an astonishing rate. "Just 'Puppy' all the time?"

"Mum?" Luke prompted.

"It's not up to me," Sarah Jane told him. "What do you think?"

"I don't like naming things," Luke said and she hid a smile, remembering how he'd told Maria that he liked her name for himself.

"Ricky? Any ideas?"

"I called my last dog Rex," the boy said cheerfully, "but Regina just sounds _wrong_."

"Ned, then?"

The latter took so long to respond that Sarah Jane took her eyes off the road to glance at him. "Ned?"

"I was thinking," he said softly. "She wants only to be touching you. She is truly a comforter spaniel. And she is the same colour as my ring."

He indicated the small silver ring he wore on his right hand, one of the few relics he retained from his previous life as Edward V. The stone at the centre of the ring was a red-gold amber, very similar in tone to the colour of the puppy's fur.

"Amber heals the body, the mind and the soul, or so my physician told me," Ned went on. "That seems an appropriate name for one such as this, don't you think?"

Sarah Jane smiled as she parked her car in her driveway in Bannerman Road. "Amber. I like it. It fits. What do you think, boys?"

The other two agreed that it would do, for a girl pup, and Sarah Jane laughed. "All right, Amber it is! And I see the TV's on. Clyde and Maria must've let themselves in." She shook her head as all three boys managed to get out of the car and into the house in the time it took her to turn off the engine, extract herself, and lock the car doors.

When she closed the front door behind her, the noise coming from the living room made her wince. The kids were talking and laughing - or arguing and laughing, it was difficult to tell which - and the puppy was barking in that high pitched puppy yip. And big dogs were barking. Sarah Jane dropped her keys and marched into the sitting room where she threw her coat over the back of the sofa.

" - second time it's been on, it must be aliens," Clyde insisted excitedly. "Think about it, it's all too convenient. Sarah Jane gets a dog and then weird stuff happens?"

"I don't think Amber's an alien," Sarah Jane interrupted firmly. "We've just had her to the vet again and been given the all clear."

"And isn't that exactly what the aliens would want?" Maria supplemented. "I don't want to believe it either, Sarah Jane, but what if he's _right_?"

Amber's barking grew to such a frenzied pitch that Sarah Jane clapped her hands over her ears. "Someone put the puppy in the kitchen. She can't behave like that. Ricky, turn the TV off. Ah!" as comparative silence descended, broken by the fainter protests coming from the kitchen as Luke returned, minus Amber.

"Now," she said once her 'team' had collected themselves and everyone was sitting down more or less quietly, "Clyde, tell me what you and Maria were shrieking about."

The two exchanged a glance. "Those dogs, the Cavaliers, they're still behaving weirdly. 'Member the other day they mentioned how a small number of them were pulling their owners towards Whitehall? Well, today Blenheim Palace has had them too!"

"Blenheim Palace?" Luke repeated, a line appearing between his brows. "That's weird too, 'cos there's a connection between it and the breed."

"How?" Maria asked.

"Well, you know Cavaliers come in four colours?"

"If we don't we should," Clyde muttered in an undertone to Maria that made Sarah Jane smile before pulling her face straight. Luke _had_ been rather enthusiastic. "Yeah, ruby, black and tan, tricolour and Blen - oh, I see!"

"They're called Blenheim because of the palace?" Ricky put in. "Why?"

"'Cos the story goes that when the Duke of Marlborough was away fighting, his wife was so worried that she kept rubbing a spot on her little spaniel's head. Good stress buster but she didn't know that, did she? Anyway, she rubbed away and the dog was pregnant, so when all the puppies were born they had a little brown spot on her heads. It's called the 'Blenheim spot' or lozenge."

"OK, so the Cavaliers have been gathering at Whitehall and Blenheim Palace," Ricky said. "Why Whitehall?"

Luke clasped his hands behind his head and sighed, leaning back against the sofa. "You've all gotten lazy, d'you know that? Why do I have to do all the work?"

Sarah Jane rolled her eyes. Clyde laughed. Maria and Ricky pummelled Luke with cushions and Ned sat quietly in his favourite armchair next to the fire, looking troubled.

"Are you going to explain or sit there looking superior?" Maria asked once she'd finished her impromptu cushion fight.

"I don't need to _look_ superior, I _am_ superior," the boy told her, reducing her to glaring silence. His mother smiled; a year ago, Luke would have presented such a statement as simple fact, but the twinkle in his eyes and the twitch at one corner of his mouth now revealed the change.

"Lukey-boy, my work here is done," Clyde said with a smirk and a slap on the back as Maria gawped. "You've finally managed to shut a girl up. Congrats, my son."

Maria raised her cushion threateningly. "Wanna bet?"

"Do you want to hear this or not?" Luke demanded with point, and his friends subsided. "Whitehall's easy. It was used as a palace in the seventeenth century, and that where Charles II lived. Charles II is the man the dogs are named after - Cavalier _King_ _Charles_ Spaniels, only the Cavalier bit is from something else. Anyway, so far, we've had the dogs appear in small numbers in two places associated with them. And you think that's aliens?!"

"Maybe they're doggy aliens," Clyde said, rather feebly for him.

"Maybe we should just talk to Mr Smith," Maria suggested. "See if he's noticed anything strange."

"Yeah, I keep meaning to ask." Clyde turned to look at Sarah Jane. "How did he start working again? Properly?"

"Oh, the Doctor fixed it for me before he went off again," she told him, getting to her feet. "Apparently the Jenan were able to beam out a pulse to disable him as long as their TARDIS was within orbit. All the Doctor had to do was break the link with the er, JARDIS. Talking to Mr Smith is a good idea. Come on!"

She led the way to the foot of the stairs, but paused to allow her younger companions to go ahead. Her original team, followed by Ricky, went up quickly, but Ned lagged behind. She raised her eyebrows at him. "You all right?"

"Yes." There was an awkward pause, and Sarah Jane sighed inwardly. "Do you go on up, my lady. I will check on Amber first and follow you."

"She'll probably be asleep," she told him as she turned to ascend the stairs. "She'd had a long day for such a baby."

"Still, I would like to make sure. We would not hear her cry in the attic."

"Ah, Edward Plantagenet, you're a softie, you know that?" She patted his shoulder, noting how his face lit up at the sound of his true name. "I'll see you in a moment."

She watched him vanish in the direction of the kitchen and sighed again, more loudly, before heading atticwards. After much discussion, the princes had taken on the surname 'Neville'. Ned had argued, quietly but insistently, for 'York' which had the virtue of being true, but she had vetoed it. The chances of people realising that the boys were temporally displaced princes were infinitesimally small, but there was no point in tempting fate. So they'd been persuaded to adopt the family name of their paternal grandmother Cecily Neville, Duchess of York. Only now was Sarah Jane realising how much the change rankled with the older boy.

"Well?" she prompted when she entered the attic and no-one turned. "Did Mr Smith have anything useful to say?"

The moment lengthened. Even the computer remained quiet, with just the occasional blink from the console indicating that it was even on.

Then Ricky flung himself into her arms. "They're all dead," he said very quietly, his voice worrying toneless. "All the little comforter dogs near Blenheim Palace. They're all _dead_!"


	3. Chapter 3

Sarah Jane's arms closed reflexively around the child and she looked over Ricky's head to meet Luke's grave stare. "What? They're all dead – all the Cavaliers?"

Her eldest son's answer was to turn back to the supercomputer. "Mr Smith, play that footage again."

Obligingly, the computer obeyed and Sarah Jane's arms tightened even further around Ricky as she watched the news item play back. The weather was beautiful, as was the stately presence of Blenheim Palace in the background, but the sight of the sad little corpses on the ground robbed the scene of its charm.

"What happened?"

"They don't know." Maria's eyes sparked with fury and grief. "They were talking to the Duchess and she was crying. She said that while most of them – ten, I think she said –"

"Ten of those dogs?!" Clyde repeated.

Maria ignored him. "Ten of them are hers, like Luke said, because of the family history and she still breeds them. The other seven or eight just appeared out of nowhere. She wants anyone missing a Cav in the area to contact her."

Sarah Jane shook her head and guided Ricky to the sofa before she turned back to the teenagers, her arms folded. "You still haven't answered the question. Why did they die?"

"The Duchess doesn't know," Luke said. "She said that one minute they were fine, then they wanted out, and then – poof! They just collapsed." He looked at his mother. "Mum, can't we go and talk to her? Just in case Maria and Clyde are right and it is aliens?"

Ricky perked up at that. "You mean the little dogs aren't really dead?" he asked hopefully.

Maria went to him and put an arm around him. "You never know." She ruffled the red-gold locks. "Don't expect too much though. You know what Luke's been on about. P'rhaps they all just – died."

The attic door closed softly and everyone looked at Ned, who was standing with Amber in his arms. "I heard." The hand that bore the amber ring caressed the puppy's head, but the blue eyes that Ned lifted to his foster-mother were flinty. "I think that Luke has the right of it, my lady. We must go and seek answers of my lady of Marlborough."

"Who's the Duchess of Marlborough anyway?" Ricky muttered. "I don't recognise the name. Do you, brother?"

"Never mind history now," Clyde interrupted impatiently. "We'll be here all day if Luke gets started. Google it if you really want to know."

Ricky grinned and Ned looked bemused. Sarah Jane hid a grin of her own as her gaze went to each of the young faces before her. "All right," she said at last. "Mr Smith, do you have anything to add to what they've said?"

"Scanning for further reports now, Sarah Jane," the computer responded, and everyone watched with bated breath. "There are no new reports at this time – wait!" A second news item came up, and Sarah Jane and her rag-taggle bunch of teenagers leaned forward eagerly.

"'This is Kate Thompson reporting live from Woodstock. This morning we told you of the mysterious deaths of twenty Cavalier King Charles Spaniels at Blenheim Palace. Thus far no explanations are forthcoming. Nor are they the only casualties. We've just heard that a further seven dogs have died in the surrounding area – two more Cavaliers, a King Charles Spaniel, three Papillons, and a Maltese. Vets can find no connection, but all dog owners in Oxfordshire are advised to keep their animals indoors…'"

"Thank you, Mr Smith." Sarah Jane looked at Maria, Luke and Clyde. "Well, it seems you're going to have your wish, you three. We're going to Blenheim." Rather to her surprise, Clyde's face fell, and she quirked an eyebrow at him. "What's the matter?"

"We won't be able to come with you, will we, Maria and me? 'Cos I mean, your car's titchy, Sarah Jane. There's no way you can fit all of us in there and it'd take us forever to get to that palace thing by train."

Sarah Jane and Luke exchanged a grin. "That's all you know," Sarah Jane told him. "Luke?"

Her son reached into his pocket and tossed something that resembled a rubik cube at his friend. Clyde caught it, almost automatically, and Sarah Jane saw Maria flinch. She smiled at the girl in reassurance and watched her visibly relax; evidently the shape of the cube had reminded her young friend of the Verron soothsayer's gift.

Meanwhile Clyde was examining the cube closely, and even Ned came to look at it, Amber tucked under his arm. "OK, you've lost me," he said at last. "It's not a puzzle box," with a quick glance at Maria and Sarah Jane, "but what is I've no clue."

"Can't you do better than that, Clydey-boy?" Luke teased. "C'mon, think. What's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?"

Clyde's eyes grew wide. "You haven't!" He looked at the cube with some awe. "Does this thingy turn Sarah Jane's car into a TARDIS?"

Sarah Jane laughed. "I wish. No, unfortunately that's impossible. However, Luke has worked with Mr Smith and K9 and between them they've scanned many different alien technologies for something that will have a similar effect. This," she indicated the cube, "is a molecular compressor. Once it's plugged into the engine of my car it will work like the TARDIS to all intents and purposes."

Clyde eyed the cube with some distrust. "Hmm. Not sure I like the sound of that. I like my molecules the way they are."

"In that case you can take the train," Maria told him sweetly before heading out of the attic with everyone else trailing behind her. "I think it's marvellous. Well done, Luke!"

Needless to add, Clyde refused to be left behind and almost caused an accident on the narrow stairs by pelting down them so fast that he tripped and was only saved by Ned grabbing him back with a strong hand. "Be careful, Clyde," the former king warned seriously. "Had I not been here you would have fallen on top of my lady, and mayhap done her a grave injury."

Sarah Jane turned to smile her thanks at him as they emerged onto the landing. She patted Clyde's shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm not that breakable. Ned's just over-protective."

Clyde's sheepish grin faded to be replaced by a smirk. "Nah, he's right, isn't he? After all, can't have you falling down the stairs at your age. We'd never get anywhere then!" Rightly judging discretion to be the better part of valour, he followed Maria, Ricky and Luke down the main stairs, leaving Sarah Jane gasping and Ned glaring.

"He is _rude_, my lady," Ned said severely.

Sarah Jane laughed up at him. "He's not rude, Ned. That's just Clyde. He doesn't mean anything by it. Now," she went on as she linked arms with him and proceeded down the stairs in a more stately manner than the others had managed, "what are we going to do with Lady Amber there?" She indicated the contented puppy in his arms.

Ned looked anxious. "May we not bring her with us? I am loath to leave her here lest ill should befall her."

"I'm not sure that would be wise," his foster-mother observed as she collected her coat and keys and handed him his jacket. "I don't know how long we'll be and there may be more danger there. If I were you I'd leave her here. She'll be fine in her pen and I'll get Maria's dad to check on her if we're not back in a couple of hours."

Reassured, Ned consented to put the puppy into her pen along with the requisite water dish and 'nappy' as Clyde termed the puppy pads. Amber was clearly not impressed at being left, and her yelps followed them out to the car. Fortunately, the others yelled at Ned to hurry up and see for himself how well Luke's molecular compressor worked, so they were able to get off without further delay.

The car journey did not take long, although Sarah Jane often found herself wincing as the noise level rose in the back as Luke and Clyde argued over whether the radio should play the latest chart hits or the news. Maria effectively shut them both up by speculating over the kind of alien that could cause mass canine death, and Sarah Jane exchanged a quiet glance of amusement with Ned as the guesses quickly delved into the realm of absurdity.

"-it's the food, I'm telling you," Clyde argued. "Have you seen that stuff? It looks like rabbit sh - poo."

"What's rabbit shpoo?" Ricky asked.

"Er –"

"Clyde Langer, you're a bad lot," Maria said as well as she could for laughing. "Take an impressionable medieval kid and expose him to you and what do you get?"

"A very confused kid with a dirty mouth," Luke responded cheerfully. "Ricky, don't use any of the words Clyde teaches you. Mum might threaten to wash your mouth out and you never know, she probably has something nastier than normal human soap."

Clyde grinned. "Ew. Just think, imagine Sarah Jane washing your mouth out with glooped Slitheen. Ew, ew, eeew!"

"I'm sure I can think of something worse than that," Sarah Jane assured him as she turned the car into the long driveway that wound its way through the Blenheim estate. "Now listen to me, you people," she said, becoming serious again, "I don't know how well the Duchess will take us coming like this. She might very well tell us to clear off."

"Will you sonic her if she does?" Clyde asked in his usual irrepressible fashion

"Clyde!" Sarah Jane protested just as Ricky said, "Oh Mamere, please don't. You might have your head cut off if you do."

"Aw, bless," Maria said as the boys laughed again. "Ricky, honestly, you don't need to worry. No-one gets their head chopped off anymore."

"Besides, they'd never get close enough to Sarah Jane to try," Clyde declared. "Have you _seen _how fast she is with her sonic lippy? She's more likely to nobble them than they are to nobble her – Hey! Are we here yet?" He leaned forward to hand between the front seats and grin at Sarah Jane and Ned just as they drew up in front of the great pillared front door.

Sarah Jane rolled her eyes as she pushed down on her brakes and the car came to an abrupt stop. "We're here. Remember what I said, you lot!" she called out as the teenagers began to tumble out of the car at their normal high speed.

"That is some house!" Clyde announced once they were all standing in a row in front of the great palace that has been part of the Spencer-Churchill family since they early eighteenth century. "Imagine havin' all this!"

Maria slipped her arm through Ned's. "Is this the kind of place you lived in?" she asked with real curiosity. "Only older, of course."

"Not like this," Ned said softly. "I have never seen brickwork such as this except in pictures of ancient Rome and Greece."

"That's exactly what it's from," Sarah Jane told him as she finished checking the car. "Palladian architecture was inspired by the buildings of the ancient world." She put an arm around each of them. "It's wonderful, isn't it?"

Before either Maria or Ned could respond, a tall thin woman with tightly permed hair and a tweed suit came scurrying towards them. Sarah Jane pressed their shoulders before casting the others a warning glance and stepping forward with her hand extended.

"Hello there, I'm Sarah Jane Smith," she began cordially before the other woman could get word in. "I'm a journalist and I'm here with my young researchers. We're checking up on the story about the dogs –"

"No further comment!" the permed woman snapped. "The Duchess is distraught. She cannot be troubled again today."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Sarah Jane said as she saw Luke and Clyde slip away out of the corner of her eye. "It affects us personally as well. You see, my sons found a Cavalier puppy abandoned by the roadside last week, and of course we've adopted her. We couldn't leave the little thing to die, could we. People are so cruel." She pretended to wipe her eyes as she spoke, but watched the other woman closely and saw her visibly relax.

"How dreadful! Such people should not be allowed to have dogs," the tweeded one said firmly. "We would never dream of doing such a thing – oh, Duchess! I hope we did not disturb you?"

The slender woman of Sarah Jane's age who had come up to them shook her head. "No. I could not rest if I wanted to," she said with some bitterness. "Twenty dogs dead! It seems impossible."

"Were they ill?" Sarah Jane asked gently.

The Duchess seemed to see her for the first time and her impeccably groomed eyebrows went up. Her secretary – or at least that was who Sarah Jane assumed the tweeded one to be – became flustered. "I'm terribly sorry, Your Grace. Miss Smith – it is Miss Smith, isn't it? – is a journalist and she's interested in knowing more about your poor little furbabies."

Sarah Jane heard Maria smother a choke of laughter and could hardly blame her. 'Furbabies' indeed!

"-she's not like the others," the other woman was saying. "She _understands_, Duchess. Only last week she got a Cavalier of her own."

The Duchess's startlingly blue eyes narrowed. "Did you indeed, Miss Smith. I hope you know what you're doing."

"She was a rescue," Sarah Jane explained hurriedly. "We're very aware of the breed's health issues. My sons between them have agreed to cover Amber's insurance costs."

"Your sons, Miss Smith?"

Sarah Jane ushered Ned and Ricky forward and prayed that the modern haircuts and clothes would disguise their likeness to a certain fifteenth century English king. "These two, Ned and Ricky, and their brother, Luke. Where's Luke?"

"He's gone off wandering again," Maria said quickly. "You know what he is, Miss er, Smith. Hates staying still for any length of time."

The tweeded one looked disapproving. "Really, _Miss_ Smith! _Three_ sons!"

"They're adopted," Sarah Jane told her sweetly, inwardly wishing that she could sonic the other woman's improbably solid perm into something altogether more hair-raising. "Well, Ned and Ricky are," she improvised. "Old family friend. Luke's my nephew. Parents died in a road accident. Very tragic."

The disapproval melted, but before the secretary could say any more, the Duchess took a hand. "All right, that's enough, Muriel. Did you get in touch with Brown about this weekend's fishing parties? You didn't? Well, see to it at once, please."

The secretary flurried away and there was a moment of awkward silence before the Duchess said in a rapid low voice, "You want to know how they died. It was very sudden. One moment they were all fine, and they next they were hysterical – even for Cavaliers." She smiled sadly. "Then they all made the most awful, utterly ghastly sound and – and seized, I suppose. When the tremors stopped they were - dead."

"How horrible," Maria gasped. She looked sick. "How absolutely _horrible_. Did you see it all yourself?"

"Yes," the Duchess said quietly. "And you're right. It was – horrible." She shuddered. "I've bred these dogs for forty years, and I've seen them die in all manner of ways. But I've never seen anything like this."

At that point Luke and Clyde came back, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads. Sarah Jane tried to wave at them to indicate that they should be quiet, but they were too full of what they had to say to notice.

"Mum, you've got to see –" Luke began excitedly.

"They're glowing, Sarah Jane," Clyde insisted. "Honestly. _Glowing_, I tell you."

"Clyde and Maria were right," Luke went on, ignoring Maria's frantic cutting motions across her throat. "It _is_ aliens!"

At that, the Duchess's face drained of all its colour and she crumpled gracelessly to the ground, leaving Sarah Jane and her 'team' staring.


	4. Chapter 4

**Um, weird things happened when I wrote this chapter. It went to places I never expected to go, and while nothing particularly nasty actually happens, there's some conversation that might upset people. I doubt it, but it doesn't hurt to stick a warning in. Thanks to the people who have reviewed so far!**

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Sarah Jane and company found themselves being hustled off the estate in short order once the Duchess had been carried to her rooms. Normally, she would have found some way to evade the order - Blenheim was a large estate, and years of investigative journalism and ruffling people's feathers had taught her how to get her own way. Unfortunately the secretary proved to be a wary lady with some experience of cunning journalists, and she sent one of the estate's people to escort Sarah Jane's little car to the gatehouse and on to the road beyond.

"Isn't there another way in?" Clyde asked as Sarah Jane continued to drive away from Blenheim Palace. "'Cos we managed before, remember, with the freaky nuns playing Statues."

"That was the Gorgon, Clyde," Maria admonished.

Luke remained very quiet, and Sarah Jane glanced at him in her rearview mirror. "Well, Luke?" Her son hardly seemed to hear her and looked at him again. Now that they were back in the car his excitement had faded and he seemed unwell. "Luke?" she repeated with more urgency.

Maria clearly caught her tone and turned to him. Not for the first time, Sarah Jane blessed the day that the girl had barged into her life. "Luke!" she was saying, adding force to her words with a good shake. "Are you OK? You look a bit sick."

"It was all the dogs," he said quietly. "We've seen aliens, but - but I've never seen anything _normal_ dead before." He shuddered, and Sarah Jane blinked as she saw Maria put an arm around him. "They were so limp and lifeless and I couldn't help thinking of Amber like that and - and their eyes. Mum, their eyes were glowing! They were _dead_ and their eyes were _glowing_!"

Sarah Jane was very glad that they were on a deserted road, for her son's words made her swerve, even though she had expected them on some level. "Was anything else odd?" she asked.

"Nah, don't think so," Clyde said. "Luke's right though. It was kinda nasty. All those poor little dogs and then - whew! Spooky glowing eyes!" He gave an exaggerated shudder and wiggled his fingers, but Sarah Jane knew he was not as offhand as he pretended. She glanced at her watch. It was almost four o'clock and they could all, she felt, do with something to eat before they continued home. Consequently, she turned into the next service station she saw, and the kids visibly cheered up.

"Are we getting grub?" Ricky asked hopefully, his blue eyes growing impossibly large.

"Do you _ever_ think of anything apart from your stomach?" Ned retorted, sounding so much like an ordinary brother that Sarah Jane laughed.

Ricky's simple 'no' made her laugh more, and even Luke seemed less upset once they were seated in Pizza Hut and waiting for someone to take their order.

Sarah Jane placed an embargo discussing the day's events whilst they were eating, and instead turned the conversation to school. Her original team had just started their GCSE courses, whilst Ned and Ricky would be starting school for the first time the following Monday.

"Are you looking forward to it?" Maria asked as she happily munched her way through a three cheese stuffed crust deep pan pizza.

"It's gonna be cool," Ricky said with an enthusiasm that made the others smile. Then his mobile face dimmed a little. "The only thing is, it's just gonna be me. At least the rest of you will all be together."

"It's just for a few months," Sarah Jane comforted. "In September you'll be joining the others at Park Vale. I'd keep you at home until then if it wasn't for the fact that if you go now you should have some friends in your year before September. Starting school when you're completely new isn't easy, is it, Clyde?"

Clyde shook his head vigorously. "You bet it isn't! I was lucky. I hooked up with Luke and Maria on the first day so it was cool."

"That wasn't what you said at the time," Maria murmured, giving Luke a sidelong grin that Sarah Jane was glad to see he tentatively returned.

"What about you, Ned?" Sarah Jane asked.

The older boy looked anxious. "I will be OK," he said. "I am - I mean, I'm - in the same class as Luke and Clyde, am I not? They will let no ill befall me."

Clyde groaned. "Shot to pieces, that's what my street cred is gonna be, I tell ya. Ned my man, you've been with Sarah Jane for nearly six months. Can't you talk like a human being _yet_?"

Ned's fair skin flushed darkly and Maria glared at Clyde. "Come off it. I know you don't care about 'cool' as much as you pretend, Clyde Langer." She pointed her fork at him. "You'll help Ned or I'll know the reason why."

Clyde looked injured. "'Course I will, what you think I am? He's one of the team, isn't he? One of the gang. 'Sides, I think our year'll cope. Luke was nearly as bad but now we're all used to him."

Once everyone had had their fill, Sarah Jane put her hand over Luke's. "Are you all right?"

He gave her a weak grin. "Yeah. Sure. Don't worry about me, Mum." He still looked at little white around the lips, but the food and banter had restored him somewhat so his mother let it go. She would check on him again later in private, for she knew he was apt to worry about things.

Now she looked at Clyde. "And you? Anything else you want to add to what you told us in the car - and no explicit descriptions, please!"

Their 'joker' glanced about him for a moment and then put his hand into his pocket and withdrew something that he passed to Sarah Jane. "No descriptions, but I did get this. Thought it might be of some use," he ended casually.

Sarah Jane unfolded the hanky - which she was pleased to note was clean and pristine - with delicate fingers and found herself staring at a handful of chestnut and white hairs. She looked up and met Clyde's dark eyes and smiled. "Good for you," she murmured, and he relaxed.

"What is it?" Maria asked, leaning over to see.

The older woman put the hanky and its contents onto her napkin, and everyone drew a breath. Luke's eyebrows came together and then his eyes opened very widely. "DNA for Mr Smith! That's what it's for, isn't it?"

Clyde, nervous grin and swagger in place, nodded. "Yeah. Surprised you didn't think of it, Lukey-boy."

"I was too upset," Luke said frankly. "Those eyes!" He turned to Sarah Jane. "Honestly, Mum. They were black and iridescent and glowing, like - like- "

"Like oil in water on the road?" Maria suggested suddenly.

"Yeah. That's it. That's exactly it. Only the silvery-green was stronger."

"And then it faded," Clyde added. He nodded towards the tissue that Sarah Jane was folding. "The dog I took that from. Her - its - eyes were like that, all oily and glowing, and then ... they just faded to black. Flat, dead black."

"But Cavaliers have _brown_ eyes," Maria objected, frowning. "At least Amber does."

"They all do," Ned reminded them. "Do you - don't you - remember what Luke told us of - about - what a Cavalier should be? The eyes should be a 'warm dark brown'."

"That was Canada's breed standard," Luke put in, perking up. "Ours isn't that specific. Just says 'dark'."

"That still isn't black," Maria observed.

Sarah Jane got to her feet. "No point in sitting here arguing about it," she told them firmly. "Ricky, I think you've had enough. You'll explode if you carry on - not _literally_, of course! - Luke, here's the keys. Get everyone into the car and I'll be with you as soon as I've paid." Clyde lingered as the others obeyed, and she smiled at him. "You OK?"

"Did I do right? About the - you know?"

She patted his shoulder. "You were _brilliant_, Clyde. That was going to be my next step and I don't mind telling you that I wasn't looking forward to it. Come on."

"You can't pay for all of us," Clyde argued as he followed her to the till. "I can pay for mine, honest."

"Don't be silly, it's my treat. Go on. I'm coming." She repressed a smile as Clyde reluctantly obeyed, and the woman at the till looked approvingly after him.

"He's rather cute, isn't he?" she asked as she processed Sarah Jane's card. "Not many young men like him would want to pay."

Sarah Jane smiled and entered her pin when the terminal was pushed towards her. "He's a good kid. They all are. Thanks!" She nodded at the young woman, collected her card, and walked quickly back to the car and its load of teenagers. "All right then?" she asked once she was in and Maria had confirmed that everyone was appropriately belted up (Clyde, Ricky and Ned tended to 'forget' about that little detail). "Let's go home. We have an appointment with Mr Smith."

* * *

Once they had arrived back at Bannerman Road, all of the kids except Luke followed Clyde and Maria up to the attic. Luke headed straight for the kitchen and Amber, and Sarah Jane nodded at Ned when the boy stopped at the foot of the stairs.

"I'm sure she's fine," she assured him. "We'll bring her up with us. You go on."

Ned did not hesitate in obeying, and a rueful smile tugged at Sarah Jane's lips as she went through the living room into the kitchen. For a boy who had once been Heir Apparent to the throne, Ned was surprisingly biddable. Not that she was sorry. She still shuddered when she thought of what her life could have been like had he been the arrogant teenager she had half expected. When she entered the kitchen, she found Luke on the floor next to Amber's x-pen, and for a moment her heart plunged to her toes.

"Luke?" she whispered.

Her son looked up and she sighed in relief when she saw that the puppy was as fit as a fiddle. She was a sensitive little thing, though - she had clearly picked up on Luke's distress, his mother noted, and was curled against his collarbone with her small russet head snuggled in the hollow between his neck and shoulder.

"She's OK, Mum," Luke said. His eyes looked very bright all of a sudden and he turned his face away. He was a teenage boy, after all.

Sarah Jane sat down beside him on the floor and took boy and puppy into her arms. "I'm sorry for what you and Clyde saw this afternoon," she murmured as she pressed her forehead to his. "But you know the work we do. It's not always nice, and sometimes - sometimes it will be horrible for the very reason you said: because it's the ordinary twisted into something that shouldn't be. You've seen death before, but in ways that makes it less than real, I sometimes feel." She sighed. "I worry that coming with me hardens you children. You've seen some wonderful things, and some awful, _awful_ things -"

"So did you, when you travelled with the Doctor," Luke returned softly.

His mother ruffled his hair. "Yes, but I was an adult by then. I was twenty three when I first hooked up with him and at least I did have some concept of normality, just as Clyde and Maria and even Ned and Ricky do. You've never known anything else."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Luke said fiercely. He slid down on the floor so that he could rest his head on her shoulder, something he had not done for some time. "You're my mum, and you and the princes and Maria and Clyde, you're my family. My normality. It was just - just that when we've seen aliens and stuff die before, it's been .... dramatic? Explosions and falls and so on. I've never seen that horrible stiff stillness before - and then Clyde touched them to get the hairs, and I know I should have thought of it but I didn't and I'm sorry -" He sniffed and Amber whimpered and licked his nose, and he gave a muffled laugh.

"It's a different sort of innocence," Sarah Jane said thoughtfully. "Clyde and Maria and Ned and Ricky have all seen death like that before. The princes especially, I'm sure. Even Clyde and Maria may have lost family members, or a pet, so it was less shocking for them than for you. Sadly it's something we all have to face, at some point."

Luke clutched her tightly. "Just don't die on me for a long long time."

Sarah Jane's throat closed as she tightened her arms around him, and then laughed as the puppy expressed her displeasure at being squashed. "Sorry, Amber... Oh, Luke. I won't, I promise I won't. I know I often seem as if I'm rushing in where angels - or aliens! - fear to tread, but I'm fifty-eight now. I _know_ I'm mortal. Not like you young people who just go in headlong regardless of the consequences because you think you're invincible."

"Clyde doesn't think he's invincible, he knows he is," Luke retorted, sounding much more like himself.

"He doesn't, not really. That's just a front he puts up. Inside Clyde's just as scared as the rest of you most of the time."

"OI, Mum! I never said anything about being _scared_!" Luke's voice was almost indignant, and Sarah Jane smiled.

"You didn't have to. There's nothing wrong with being scared. 'The brave man is not he who feels no fear ... But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.' Joanna Baillie said that nearly two hundred years ago and she's absolutely right."

Luke shifted again so that he was sitting up once more, his head against the wall. "I like that. Perhaps she knew the Doctor. Can we put it on Mr Smith's screensaver?"

Sarah Jane burst into startled laughter. "You may, if he'll let you. Otherwise we'll print it off and find somewhere to put it up there. It's something we can all do with remembering from time to time. Well, are you feeling better?"

Luke turned his head so that he was facing her, and grinned. The shadows were gone from his eyes and her worry lessened. He coped so very well most of the time that even she sometimes forgot that he was to all intents and purposes not much more than a year old. She returned his grin.

"Good. In that case, get up and we'll head upstairs - and don't forget to give me a hand up while you're at it!"

Luke's eyes sparkled with sudden mischief. "What's the matter, Mum, can't get up under your own steam?"

"Cheek. Give me your hand, young man. _Thank_ you. Now, shall we bring the pup up with us?"

"We'll have to, or Ned'll come down after her," Luke responded, dumping Amber into his mother's arms. "I'm gonna get some crisps. Honestly, Mum, don't you think it would make more sense to leave food up there and ask some nice alien for a portable fridge?"

Sarah Jane's eyebrows went up as she saw him haul out two bumper packs of crisps and a bottle of Coke before heading out of the kitchen. "Why would you need an alien one when you can get a perfectly ordinary one from ASDA?" she called after him as he led the way back through the living room to the bottom of the stairs.

He turned and gave her a look that momentarily reminded her of the Doctor. "'Cause we're_ not _ordinary, are we? We're the Smiths and Co. Why would we want a normal fridge when we could have one that talks or sonics or watches black holes. That's much more us!"

She shook her head in amusement and followed him up the three flights of stairs that Clyde was always complaining about and into the attic. "So?" she demanded, passing Amber to Maria. "What's the verdict?"

The girl looked up from the pup. "It's alien all right," she began gloomily, "and not the worst sort of alien, either. They seem pretty harmless by and large-"

"- you mean apart from an irresistable attraction to humanoid males?" Clyde supplemented sarcastically.

Sarah Jane's eyebrows shot up again and she fought the desire to giggle. "What? How do you mean?" Mr Smith whirred and beeped and she turned to look at the supercomputer. "What are they talking about, Mr Smith?"

"Hello, Sarah Jane. Maria and Clyde have summarised the situation accurately insofar as they know it. The dog's DNA has been impregnated with a symbiotic alien lifeform known as the Ospita. They can only survive on Earth-style planets by inhabiting a host. Recently my scanners picked up an alien craft that did not seem to be significant."

"Who said you could give an opinion?" Clyde muttered, and Sarah Jane threw him a warning glance.

The computer, needless to say, ignored him and went on. "The craft was not armed and did not in any way appear to pose a threat. However, its presence occurred two days before the news reports of mutiple canine deaths."

"And you think there's a connection," Maria prompted.

"I do not think, Maria. I know. The craft's signature matches that of the DNA sample that Clyde provided. Clearly, some or all of the dead dogs were playing host to this lifeform and their deaths were triggered by the resumption of the Ospita breeding cycle when the Hub entered Earth orbit. This is the only time the lifeform becomes active when in Earth-normal climate; the rest of the time it lies dormant."

Sarah Jane bit her lip. "But when the Ospita enter their breeding cycle their host needs change," she began. "Is that right? But because they've been in the dogs' systems for a while, they've become completely sybiotic and the dogs cannot survive their removal." She glanced nervously at Clyde and her sons. "What did Clyde mean when he mentioned humanoid males?"

Mr Smith began to answer, but then he interruped himself with a series of beeps before saying, "Sarah Jane, I have just scanned the latest news reports. Rioting and disorder has broken out in Woodstock, areas of Surrey and Berkshire, and several parts of London - including Mayfair and West Ealing and is spreading in this direction. The police advise that everyone in the affected areas secure their houses and remain indoors."

TBC


End file.
